Database Spotlight: Application Registry Service DB

Unlike other databases that SharePoint 2010 creates, the Application Registry Service Database is actually included in the mix for backward compatibility of SharePoint Server 2007 Business Data Catalog connection information and other information pertinent to the BDC API.

By default, the database name is “Application_Registry_Service_DB_<GUID>”. I’m not quite certain why, but I’m not so much a fan of the out of the box naming of databases with a GUID appended to the end – though I guess it does ensure that you’re never going to inadvertently create one on the fly that has the same name as others.

Similar to the BDC, the Application Registry Service database is read-heavy since there isn’t any writing done with the BDC . And though the services architecture is a bit more broken out, you can only have a single Application Registry Service per farm, which means that you can only have a single database associated with your farm, which in turn means get ready to watch it grow should you be migrating several BDCs into your farm while you prep them for conversion to Business Connectivity Services candidates.

Fortunately for scalability purposes, it is possible to mirror this database within a farm to ensure availability of data for the BDCs to operate, however it’s not possible to mirror the database or use log shipping to mirror the database onto another SQL instance. Perhaps keeping a backup handy would be helpful should the data become corrupted or your server’s SAN melt.

A visualization of the tables and associated columns is depicted here:

If you’re wondering what the tables and their associated columns look like for the Application Registry, then look no further as they are as follows: